Search results

Accurate information is the basis for well-informed decision-making, which is particularly challenging in the dynamic reality of a pandemic. Search engines are a major gateway for obtaining information, yet little is known about the quality and scientific accuracy of information answering conspiracy-related queries about COVID-19, especially outside of English-speaking countries and languages.

The authors conducted an algorithmic audit of Google Search, emulating search queries about COVID-19 conspiracy theories in 10 different locations and four languages (English, Arabic, Russian, and Hebrew) and used content analysis by native language speakers to examine the quality of the available information.

Searching the same conspiracies in different languages led to fundamentally different results. English had the largest share of 52% high-quality scientific information. The average quality score of the English-language results was significantly higher than in Russian and Arabic. Non-English languages had a considerably higher percentage of conspiracy-supporting content. In Russian, nearly 40% of the results supported conspiracies compared to 18% in English.

This study’s findings highlight structural differences that significantly limit access to high-quality, balanced, and accurate information about the pandemic, despite its existence on the Internet in another language. Addressing these gaps has the potential to improve individual decision-making collective outcomes for non-English societies.

This study aims to integrate the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory with Mair and Noboa’s (2006) model to evaluate the stimulating role of education-related stimuli (i.e. entrepreneurial education, curriculum and lecturer competency) and the moderation impact of perceived university support on students’ emotional and cognitive processes of social entrepreneurship.

A sample of 401 university students in Vietnam and a three-step analysis approach via SPSS 28.0 and AMOS 25.0 were used to test the hypothesized model.

This study revealed that while entrepreneurship education and lecturer competency are positively associated with psychological organisms, then in turn affect social entrepreneurial intention and behaviors, the curriculum seems to be less significant. Social entrepreneurial intention was positively affected by social entrepreneurial self-efficacy and perceived social support, but not significantly influenced by empathy or moral obligation. As expected, the higher the perceived university support, the stronger the relationship between social entrepreneurial intention and social start-up behavior.

The findings of this study can be valuable for educators, policymakers and practitioners to inspire students’ entrepreneurial activities.

This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by adopting SOR theory to investigate the importance of education-related stimuli, exploring the underlying mediation mechanism of emotional and cognitive organism and explaining the moderation role of perceived university support in the fostering of students’ social entrepreneurship.